


The Results Are In

by onward_came_the_meteors



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Friendship, Gen, Humor, POV Third Person, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Team Dynamics, because it's fun to make fun of clint, bruce claims no affilation with these so-called "avengers", everyone has a sense of humor because i said so, everyone makes fun of clint, natasha is probably just screwing with everybody but do you really want to take that chance, steve would like a large block of ice to crawl back into please and thank you, thor is the strongest aveng, tony and rhodey are probably going to take over the world one day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29761551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: After the events of Winter Soldier, the world is desperate to weed out Hydra members in disguise. Predictably, the measures get more and more ridiculous with time, butthis... well, this is a whole new level.Or, the Avengers take a personality quiz. And the results aren't exactly as expected.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Clint Barton & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark & Thor
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	The Results Are In

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The words, muttered under breath in a tone of mixed amusement and bewilderment, broke the silence that had settled comfortably over Avengers Tower for most of the afternoon. Despite what overexcited tourists, certain newspaper chains, and killjoy higher-ups liked to believe, a towerful of superheroes wasn’t necessarily a den of chaos all the time… just most of the time, and today was one of those nice surprises otherwise.

Unsurprisingly, the silence had been broken by Tony, who was reading something on his phone, interest rapidly growing on his face. His foot stretched out to anchor his swivel chair to the floor.

Whatever he’d been doing—assuming the answer wasn’t just “draw attention”—had involved a lot of idly spinning back and forth and tapping away at his phone. Either Stark Industries was about to implement a ton of new designs, the Iron Man suit was about to receive some new upgrades, or Tony was absolutely killing it on the Candy Crush leaderboards.

Natasha and Thor looked up from where they sprawled on the floor. Their game of chess had been going on for a solid forty minutes, with a disturbingly large amount of pieces still on the board.

“What?”

Tony shook his head. “I’ve found quite possibly either the best or worst creation on the entire Internet.” He was still scrolling through whatever it was, apparently unable to look away.

Natasha slid her knight into Thor’s rook, knocking it off the board to a dismayed noise from Thor. “Are you going to narrow that down at all?”

“I might if you were actually listening to me.”

“This is a very critical game,” Thor said, his eyes fixed on the board. He might not have been blinking. “The fate of the Nine Realms may hang in the balance.”

“... I have officially lost the ability to tell when you’re being serious or not.” Tony glanced up at the ceiling. “JARVIS, where are Cap and Bruce? They’re missing important current events.”

The AI’s voice echoed from hidden speakers. “They are both in the kitchen. Shall I notify them of urgency?”

Tony waved a hand. “Yeah, do that.” Then he froze. “J, that  _ doesn’t _ mean setting off the ‘Avengers assemble’ alarm. I’m not replacing those countertops again.”

“Very well.” JARVIS sounded almost disappointed.

“You’re the best. And someone get Barton out of the vents.”

There was a rustle from the corner armchair as Clint looked up at his name. “Dude, I’ve been here.”

Tony started. “Don’t  _ do _ that!”

“Guy with a heart condition, remember?” Natasha chimed in.

Clint huffed. “I  _ didn’t _ —”

He was interrupted by the whoosh of elevator doors opening and Steve and Bruce joining the throng. Steve had a dishtowel poking out of his pocket like he’d forgotten about it, and both of them carried a faint cinnamon-y baked-good smell. 

“Will this be quick?” Steve asked.

“It may possibly wreak endless havoc upon the world as we know it,” Tony said.

Steve nodded. “Cool, ‘cause I don’t want to leave the milk out of the fridge too long.”

“Sure, whatever.” Tony’s gaze fell on Bruce—or, more specifically, the pants he was wearing in a very particular shade of neon purple. “JARVIS, I thought I told you no ‘assemble’ alarm.”

JARVIS sounded put out. “And I acted according to your request.”

Tony tilted his head questioningly at Bruce, who shrugged and offered “Laundry day” as an explanation before moving to sit between Thor and Natasha.

Bruce nodded to the chess game. “Who’s winning?”

Natasha and Thor narrowed their eyes at each other, neither bothering to answer.

“Oookay.”

“Ahem,” Tony announced. Ideally, he would’ve waited until he knew everyone was paying attention, but that was almost certainly not happening in the near future. “Does anybody want to take this ‘are you Hydra’ quiz or not?”

At least two or three people spoke in unison. “‘Are you Hydra’ quiz?”

“Is that like an ‘am I gay’ quiz?” Thor asked.

Bruce blinked. “Have you  _ taken _ an ‘am I gay’ quiz?”

Steve cut in before Thor could answer. “Is this really why you called us in here? Because that is kind of a sensitive issue and all—”

“He’s not wrong,” Natasha said. “They’re still showing the footage of those helicarriers pew-pewing into each other whenever news is slow.”

“Okay, it’s not  _ actually _ an ‘are you Hydra’ quiz,” Tony admitted. “Somebody from what used to be S.H.I.E.L.D—” He frowned. “S.H.I.E.L.D.E.D? Can we make that a thing? Anyway, they put this together, and officially it’s a way to measure if you are, quote unquote,  _ hiding something _ or not, but I think we can read between the lines on that one.”

Thor nodded. “So it is like an ‘am I gay’ quiz.”

“Did you just say the words ‘quote unquote’ out loud?” Clint asked.

“Who sent this to you?” Natasha asked at almost the same moment.

Tony ignored both Thor and Clint and answered Natasha. “Maria Hill.”

“That makes sense.”

“It  _ really _ doesn’t,” Steve said. “I mean, except for that last part, but—”

Tony kept talking right over him. “So how it works is it gives you your likelihood as a percentage: the closer your percentage is to one hundred percent, the more likely you’re hiding ‘some facet’ of your identity, and the closer your percentage is to zero percent—”

“—the more likely you are to be an open book, pure as the driven snow, yada yada, we get it.” Clint grinned as he slid his phone from his pocket. “Can we take the quiz now?”

Bruce, who already had it pulled up, began to read aloud. “It’s not an innocent-o-meter, more like an honesty measure… but more complicated than that; it not only takes into account how likely you are to be keeping secrets, but whether you would be successful at doing so undetected, your predisposition to keeping a secret in the first place, your relationship with your own identity—”

“Look at this, we can put in our own usernames,” Thor said.

The sound of rapid-fire clicking filled the room as everyone began typing.

Natasha leaned over to Clint. “Do you think the quiz will take into account whether you used your real name as a username?”

Clint’s eyes widened. “Oh shit, I’m gonna fail.” He turned his phone around to reveal the name “ _ badassssss69. _ ”

“I’m pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D. will still be able to tell it’s you,” Steve said. Despite his earlier protests, his curiosity seemed to have gotten the better of him, and he was now huddled over his own phone in the armchair behind Thor.

New usernames kept popping up on the screen, including “ _ nat >:) _ ”, “ _ upgraded batman _ ”, and “ _ Raymond _ .”

“Why am I ‘Raymond’?” Steve asked. “I left mine blank.”

Bruce shrugged. “It must have autofilled.” He typed in “ _ b banner. _ ”

Thor turned his own phone around to show them “ _ thor son of odin god of thunder strongest aveng” _

“The rest cut off,” he explained.

Natasha grinned at Bruce. “You don’t think Hulk would want to take this too?”

“I’m pretty sure I’d know if Hulk was a Hydra agent,” Bruce said seriously. “Plus I don’t think he’d have the patience for a hundred-and-seventy-question quiz.”

“A hundred and  _ seventy? _ ” Steve asked.

“A hundred and seventy-one, actually,” Tony corrected. “Better get a move on.”

After everyone’s usernames were logged, a set of instructions appeared on the screen. Everyone promptly clicked “next.”

Steve glanced around. “Guys, I’m still reading, hang on.”

“Looming identity crises wait for no man, Rogers,” Clint said, tapping his screen to begin the quiz. “All right, question one: ‘Please select your current employee status as it relates to S.H.I.E.L.D: on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s payroll, affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D., or unaffiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D.’” He lowered his screen to reveal an expression just as confused as everyone else’s.

Bruce was the first to voice it aloud. “Well, there’s no such thing as S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore, so…”

“I assume they mean before it was vanquished to a watery grave?” Tony offered. “In which case, I’m not seeing an option for  _ I _ paid  _ them _ .”

Steve peeked over Thor’s shoulder. “Thor, you can’t put that. You’re as much affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. as the rest of us.”

Thor looked unconcerned. “I don’t remember signing anything.”

“That’s because your signature isn’t legal in this galaxy,” Natasha pointed out.

“Well, the only thing I’m affiliated with is  _ thunder _ … and Thursday and all that, but I’m standing by my answer.”

“I respect that,” Bruce said. “I am also choosing that answer.”

Steve looked back and forth between Bruce and Thor. “You guys do know we’re  _ literally _ the Avengers, right—” Met with blank expressions, he gave up. “Fine. What’s the next question?”

Clint cleared his throat dramatically. “Question two: how many people know your middle name?”

“What kind of transition is that?” Bruce muttered.

Tony tapped his screen. “Anyone on Wikipedia. Next.”

“I didn’t even know my own middle name until I was seventeen,” Natasha said.

“Yeesh. Drama queen.”

Natasha stuck her tongue out at Tony before clicking her own answer with a little hum.

“I don’t have a middle name,” Clint announced.

Natasha elbowed him. “Francis.”

Clint’s face scrunched like he was about to cry. “Shut up.”

Thor was studying his phone, a pensive expression on his face. Finally, he looked up. “I think this quiz is very rude and excluding to Asgardians.”

Steve paused. “How many Asgardians do you think are going to take this?” He chose the same answer as Tony.

“Well, I could—”

The other five Avengers’ combined “ _ No! _ ” echoed off the walls, and Thor’s careful expression cracked with a grin that only grew harder to conceal after Natasha’s dry “We’re not trying to prompt another invasion.”

Bruce clicked an answer. “Well, you guys all know my middle name.”

“Huh?” Clint frowned. “I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do, it’s just Bruce.”

Clint blinked. A bewildered expression crept over his face as he mouthed “ _ Bruce Bruce Banner _ .”

Bruce threw a pillow at him.

The pillow hit the wall behind Clint’s head, and Clint grinned.

“This is going to take forever if you all get so hung up on every question,” Tony said. He flicked his hand back and forth. “Let’s move along.”

* * *

“Question five: if applicable, how long did you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Steve read.

“Never,” Thor said.

Bruce shrugged. “Maybe like forty-eight hours?” 

“That’s classified.” Natasha’s face was impassive, and Tony made a show of leaning away from her.

“Since right outta college,” Clint said. “And by college I mean high school, and by high school I mean traveling circus.” He settled back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head with a smirk.

Tony shook his head. “One of these days I’m gonna have to find out if Barton’s actually telling the truth about that.”

“It’s true.” Natasha’s mouth curved upward. “You should see him juggle.”

Tony turned to Clint. “ _ Can _ you juggle?”

“If I’m in the mood.”

* * *

“Question eight: if applicable, what training did you receive as a member of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Check all that apply.” Clint scanned the rest of the question before pronouncing, “Yeah, I’m not reading all this. I’m checking all of them.” He glanced at Steve. “Are you going to lecture me on ruining the integrity of the quiz, Cap?”

Steve’s eyes did a thing that was barely a degree away from being a roll. Truly, the super soldier serum was an incredible invention. “I am absolutely confident that all of you are way more invested in this thing than I am.” 

“And yet you’re actually reading all the options,” Natasha pointed out. She checked every box, but for different reasons than Clint.

Thor also checked every box, but, again, for different reasons.

Tony checked zero boxes.

Bruce checked one box.

After a few seconds of deliberation, Steve also checked every box—then made eye contact with Clint, and unchecked one of them.

* * *

“Question eleven: have you ever betrayed S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Tony’s eyes narrowed over the screen, and he looked up. “Why is this question eleven? Did they think we’d make it through ten questions and then decide  _ the hell with it _ and—”

“Either way, mine and Natasha’s answers are pretty obvious,” Steve said. He shot her a somewhat apologetic look, as though he weren’t sure whether it was too soon to make jokes about that particular incident—the whole casting-any-shred-of-public-respectability-and-loyalty-to-the-organization-that-valued-you-for-something-other-than-a-blind-killing-machine-aside-in-order-to-protect-the-lives-of-innocents-from-a-squad-of-flying-murder-drones incident—but she just shot him one back that said  _ buddy, we’re past that. _

“Yeah, mine too,” Clint said quickly.

Bruce looked at him. “New York doesn’t count, you know.”

“Hey, I’m rebellious!” Clint glanced at Thor and Tony for support, but they were both muttering something to each other—Tony was doing a lot of head-shaking “no” and Thor was doing a lot of nodding “yes”—so he finally came up with, “I recruited a Russian secret agent spy assassin this one time.”

“And then I became one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best assets,” Natasha countered.

Bruce raised a finger. “You did betray S.H.I.E.L.D. in the end, though.”

“That’s true. So Clint gets points by association?”

Clint slumped back into his armchair. “One day. One day you’ll see.”

“This sounds like your supervillain origin story,” Tony said.

That was enough to get Clint to sit up again. “No way, I’d be a terrible supervillain. You know those edgy magazine articles that try to guess which of us is going evil first?” A chorus of nods. “Yeah, whenever they remember to mention me, it’s always  _ Captain America would be able to take him down in seconds _ or  _ A bow and arrow is no competition for solid vibranium  _ or _ Iron Man could just fly up and shoot him off a building. _ ” He frowned. “And I feel like I should be offended by that, but it’s reassuring that the people love me."

“I’ve never read these edgy magazine articles,” Thor observed. “But I agree that all of you would be terrible supervillains.”

“Natasha, though,” Bruce pointed out.

“Tony, though,” Steve said at the same time.

Natasha considered it. “That’s fair.”

“It is  _ not _ ,” Tony retorted. He spun his swivel chair a few degrees left so he could make suspicious eye contact with Steve, who remained unfazed. “Do you really see me turning to the dark side, Steven?”

“Not really,” Steve admitted, the words almost drowned out by the others’ laughter. “Rhodey would tell you to knock it off before you could get anywhere.”

Tony hummed a little. “That’s assuming I would ever even consider turning to the dark side if Rhodey and I couldn’t be wearing matching evil versions of our suits in complementing colors with our theme song in minor chord playing from a hidden electronic pipe organ as we fly off to commit our dastardly deeds.”

“How much time have you spent thinking about this?”

“What else am I supposed to do in board meetings?” He paused. “And speaking of, if we’re on the topic of supervillain origin stories—”

“JARVIS, then,” Steve suggested. “He’d tell both you and Rhodey to knock it off.”

“You don’t think the artificial intelligence could go evil too?” Clint asked. “That happens all the time.”

JARVIS spoke up. It was difficult to talk behind someone’s back when that someone was as close to omniscient as technology could reach, and also didn’t have a back. “I find that terribly cliche.”

Tony grinned. “That’s good to hear, J.”

“Isn’t that the whole idea of this quiz?” Thor pointed out. “Seeing who is the likeliest to—” He waved his fingers like he was pretending to be a ghost. “—deceive the rest of us?”

“That’s assuming we ever finish this quiz,” Natasha said, and everyone quickly clicked to the next question.

* * *

It was Bruce’s turn to read. “Question thirty-four: how is/was your relationship with your parent(s)/parental figure(s)/guardian(s)?”

All six of them shuffled around for a moment, awkwardly sneaking glances at each other before they all hit the same button and moved along.

“This is sort of invasive, don’t you think?” Steve murmured under his breath.

“Yeah,” Clint agreed, eyes wide. “I don’t know what I’d do if S.H.I.E.L.D. knew my…” He squinted at the next question. “… favorite ice cream flavor.”

“That’s because if you say French vanilla, you’re obviously a Hydra plant,” Bruce said.

“I like French vanilla.”

Natasha went still. “We’ve been infiltrated.”

* * *

“Question sixty.” Bruce stopped, glancing at Clint. “Am I still reading these, or do you want to switch back?”

“Nah.” Over the course of the last few questions, Clint had somehow draped himself over the armchair in a way that had both his head and his feet nearly touching the floor. “Knock yourself out.”

“Alright.” Bruce looked back down at his phone. “Question sixty: which valuable object would be the easiest for you to steal: the Mona Lisa, the tesseract, an alien from Area 51, or a piece of highly secured digital information?”

“The moon,” Clint said at once. “Like in that movie with the Minions.”

Tony looked pained. “I was having a good day, Clint. A good day where I wasn’t thinking about Minions.”

Clint grinned.

“I bet they’d let Thor into Area 51 pretty easily,” Bruce mused.

“I could get into  _ any _ of these places easily and everyone would be powerless to stop me,” Thor agreed. “But I am curious, what is Area 51?”

Natasha’s face lit up, but Tony interrupted her impending explanation with a brushed-off “Just some desert my dad bought in the sixties.”

She turned contemplative instead. “I’ve actually been offered missions to steal some of this stuff.”

“Why didn’t you?” Steve asked.

“No one was willing to pay up. Anyway, I’m an assassin, not Nicolas Cage, come on.”

“Could you have done it, though?”

Natasha gave him a look. “Please.”

* * *

“Question eighty-six, and I swear I’m not making this up—” Steve exhaled before finishing; the couple of others who’d read ahead started to laugh. “—what’s your favorite color?” 

Natasha was the picture of innocence. “How will you ever choose between red, white, and blue?” 

“Don’t make fun of him,” Tony jumped in before Steve could respond, and Steve looked relieved for the barest moment before Tony added, “He’s from the forties; everything was black and white back then.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “You make fun of me, and then you’re going to pick red because it’s the color of your suit.”

“Common misconception, actually: my suit is red  _ because _ it’s my favorite color, not the other way a—”

“So it’s bothering no one that this supposedly all-knowing advanced-algorithm quiz is giving us questions from kindergarten circle time?” Clint asked. “What’s next, our favorite dinosaur?”

Bruce answered at once. “Well, obviously ichthyosaurus, they were viviparous and…” He trailed off, flushing a little as everyone stared at him. “… and they look like dolphins.”

* * *

Tony read the next batch of questions. “Question one hundred and two: are you wearing socks right now?”

Everybody except Steve answered “no.”

* * *

“Question one hundred and fifteen: would you ever have sex with your best friend?”

Thor answered “yes” before Natasha had even finished reading. He received several raised eyebrows for that, to which he simply shrugged. “If the circumstances called for it.”

“Does this even fulfill the original purpose of the quiz?” Bruce asked. “Or did we stumble into some…” He waved his hand ineffectively.

“American Girl magazine?” Clint suggested.

“I don’t think you’ve ever read an American Girl magazine.”

Tony’s swivel chair squeaked back and forth as he read over the question, considering. “I  _ may _ have already done this? One time? Long story short, never get drunk at a Swiss tech exhibition, especially not if it’s raining and your driver’s been caught in traffic for hours already and the only way to get a ride is—”

Steve clicked an option as though Tony wasn’t speaking. “I’m not going to give the rumors more fuel than they already have,” he muttered under his breath.

“Won’t that affect your trustworthiness score at the end?” Natasha asked.

Steve’s eyes went wide. “Shit, I already answered, can I go back—”

“Hey, Clint,” Tony spoke up, interrupting Clint’s laughter. “I gotta say, I’ve been curious about your answer to this question for a while.” The rest of the room went silent, as though holding their breath.

Clint shook his head, lingering amusement still on his face. “Hell nah. I value my organs being inside my body.”

Natasha grinned sideways at him before tapping something on her own screen. 

Clint watched. “Hey, what’d you answer?” 

No response.

“Nat.”

Nothing.

“Nat,  _ what did you answer _ —”

* * *

“Here’s my theory,” Tony said, splaying his hand across the armrest after a slew of questions concerning their personal aspirations, likelihood of surviving an earthquake, and preferred brand of toothpaste. “This quiz was not meant to be the final product. Whoever made this had less time before their deadline than in their sleep schedule and decided to send out the first draft, and while I respect this person’s priorities, I do have to ask:  _ really? _ ”

“You’re the one making us do this,” Natasha noted. She’d shifted to lean against the base of Steve’s chair, her phone propped over her knees. Incidentally, if she tilted her head back a few degrees, she’d have a perfect—though upside-down—view of Steve’s phone screen.

“You’re enjoying it, though,” Tony countered. “Which brings us to question one hundred and thirty-five: how many vests do you own?”

The silence held for one beat after another. If the team were cartoon characters, big yellow question marks would be materializing over their heads.

Clint was the first to speak. “What’s a vest.” His tone was dead serious, given away only in the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Equally seriously, Bruce replied. “It’s the past tense of ‘visit’.”

“That sounds wrong, but I know you’re smarter than me, so I’ll take your word for it.”

Steve’s forehead met his hands, and like that, the others started talking at once.

Tony stared at his phone. “I don’t keep track of these things. The normal amount, I guess? Like, thirty?”

“Nat’s got a couple vests,” Clint said, dropping the act. “She looks good in those.”

Natasha nodded. “I do, but the ones you’ve seen me in didn’t belong to me.”

“Darcy bought me a sweater vest once,” Thor announced, grinning. “It’s got poodles on it.”

Steve blinked slowly. “Boy, am I glad I didn’t know that until now.”

* * *

“Question one hundred and forty-three,” Bruce read. “Do you prefer a wall calendar or a tear-off calendar?” 

“What about advent calendars?” Steve suggested.

“All year?”

“Sure, why not?” Steve’s gaze briefly drifted out the window before returning again. “I used to love those, but alas, cardboard was rationed during the War.”

Natasha frowned. “Why would you make a calendar out of cardboard?”

“More importantly, did someone besides Thor just say ‘alas’?” Tony asked.

Thor crossed his arms. “I do  _ not _ say ‘alas’.”

“I am almost practically positive you have said ‘alas’ at least once.”

“You’ve got a point, Nat,” Bruce said. He was still sprawled on the floor and apparently heedless of the conversation a few feet away. “I feel like cardboard wouldn’t have been my first choice for an advent calendar.”

“See?” Natasha thought for a moment, then added, “We do have to consider, though: what  _ wasn’t _ rationed back then?”

Bruce clasped his hands over his heart. “Friendship.”

Steve still had his finger poised over the answer button as he took in the rest of the room. “Why do I say things in front of any of you?”

* * *

“Question one hundred and forty-nine: have you—” Clint’s eyes darted over the rest of the question and he started laughing before pressing a hand to his mouth. “Nope. Nope. Okay, I’m good.” He cleared his throat. “‘Have you ever done anything illegal?’”

Natasha shook her head sorrowfully. “It’s those speeding tickets.”

“This seems like an odd question if it’s aimed at former S.H.I.E.L.D. employees,” Thor remarked, smiling to himself as he chose his answer.

“Most government employees are warned away from illegal activities,” Tony said. He held the end of the last sentence just long enough before adding, “In theory.”

Clint tapped an answer. “This is a boring question. It would be so much more fun if they’d ask us the  _ most _ illegal thing we’ve done.”

“Overdue library books,” Natasha whispered. Clint gave her a look.

“Stop that.”

Thor hummed. “What about the  _ least _ illegal thing we’ve done?”

“That… that doesn’t make any sense,” Steve objected.

Bruce considered the question for a moment. “Nothing I’ve done in the past ten years has been legal, actually.”

The back of Tony’s head hit the top of his chair.

* * *

“Question one hundred and seventy-one.” Steve closed his eyes briefly. “Thank god.” He opened them again. “Question one hundred and seventy-one: You have ridden a skateboard. True or false?”

Bruce blinked. “I  _ really _ don’t like the way they formatted that one.” He clicked “true,” as did Clint and Natasha.

“Does roller skating count?” Tony asked.

“No.”

“This is what’s gonna label me as a Hydra infiltrator, I just know it,” Tony complained, but he clicked “false.”

Steve leaned his chin on his hand. “One time, when I was with the Commandos, we were dropped behind enemy lines on this recon mission, and we only noticed the alarm was tripped once we were already inside and good as dead meat. There was one way out other than how we’d come in, and it was this  _ tiny _ —” He held his hands apart. “—little staircase, and we knew the other side would catch us pretty quick if we’d stayed still, but the staircase was just wide enough for the shield, and the shield is just wide enough for a couple pairs of feet one right behind the other, so…” He shrugged. “I guess you could say I’ve skateboarded before.”

“Sometimes I think you use the scarcity of early-twentieth-century primary sources to just say shit,” Natasha observed.

Steve grinned. “I  _ am _ an early-twentieth-century primary source.” He tapped his screen, bringing up the end of the quiz. “Let’s get our results already.”

“Like you have to ask,” Tony muttered.

“I really, really wasn’t.”

Six gray loading circles spun across their screens, unspooling ever so slowly. Thor tapped his fingers on the coffee table in time with the scraping of swivel chair wheels, and Natasha stared into her phone as though force of will would reveal their final scores.

“I got twenty-three percent!” Clint finally announced, nearly folding himself in half as he rocketed back into an upright sitting position. Somehow he managed to keep ahold of his phone in the process—if he hadn’t, the others might’ve been about to see those juggling skills in action. “Really, though, what gives? I worked for a literal secret agency and it says I’m only twenty-three percent likely to be hiding something?”

“Maybe it’s because you’re only twenty-three percent likely to show up at work,” Natasha said, brows raised.

“I show up when it’s important.” Clint made the mistake of glancing at Steve, who was nodding along slowly with a vibrantly sarcastic  _ do tell _ expression. “Um. I mean. Not that. Brainwashed cyborg assassins and secret Nazi conspiracies aren’t important. ‘Cause they totally are. And I absolutely would have—if—see, I had a thing and—”

“I have sixty-seven percent.” Tony was frowning ever so slightly—and obviously unaware he’d interrupted anything—but it was less a type of “displeasure” frown and more a type of “how do I increase the blast of the Iron Man repulsors without exploding my whole arm when I fire it, as that would assign an entirely new meaning to the word ‘firearm’ and I don’t want to be the catalyst for another etymological phenomenon” frown. “Why do I have sixty-seven percent? I’m a—I’m  _ the  _ public figure and have been for some time. And I feel like I’ve really done a better job, you know, opening up. Learning about the importance of communication. Working as a team.”

Natasha held out her phone, a striking ninety-four percent bold-texted across the front. “I think I broke the quiz.”

Steve whistled and Bruce clapped. Natasha smirked, glancing up at the ceiling as JARVIS spoke up.

“Nobody else has achieved that high of a score so far,” JARVIS confirmed. There was a half-second pause that was no doubt trillions of data bits long for the AI. “However, one might take into consideration that the former director Fury has not yet taken the quiz.”

There was a murmuring of agreement that if Fury did indeed take the quiz, it would crash and have to reset entirely.

A few seconds passed in silence, as though everyone left was waiting for each other to speak, before Thor finally spoke up, looking the tiniest bit smug. “Twenty-two percent over here.”

Clint’s head snapped to Thor, eyes widening as the beginnings of sentences started from his mouth. “How is yours so close to mine—what did you—what does that  _ mean _ ?”

“Maybe Thor is secretly you from another dimension.” Bruce grinned, making only a halfway attempt to hide it with a hand as the others stifled laughter, glancing between the two of them.

Clint shook his head dejectedly, allowing Thor to pat his shoulder. “Man. I don’t think I like this quiz anymore.”

Natasha wasn’t bothering to hide her own amusement. “Counter-theory: Thor is you with a budget.”

“Nah. Thor is  _ Steve _ with a budget.”

Everyone turned to Steve, who looked like he was thinking it over, trying and failing to hold back a smile at every turn. “In that case,” he said. “I’m sorry in advance, but Tony is Bruce with a budget.”

“Oh, god, no.” Bruce put his head in his hands, but he was laughing as Tony slid out of his chair and wrapped his arms around him in a motion that was half-hug and half-tackle.

Natasha nonchalantly scooted away and glanced at Clint. “Does that mean I’m you with a budget?”

“Why is everyone bullying me today?” Clint complained.

Tony eventually sat up again—after a muffled and blatantly untrue protest by Bruce that he “couldn’t breathe” and to “get your abandonment issues off me please”—and peered over to Bruce’s phone. “Well? Don’t hold out on us here, Banner, no point in being shy anymore after question one hundred twenty-seven.”

The team collectively shuddered, and Bruce obligingly produced his phone.

“Alright, but fair warning that I have no idea what it means.” He noticed the others watching him and shrugged. “I got fifty percent.”

“Exactly?” 

“Exactly.”

“Huh. How did you do that?”

“I don’t know what happened.”

Steve was watching with interest, leaning forward slightly. “You think that’s weird, wait until you see mine.” He held up his own screen to reveal a seventy-two percent.

Chaos erupted. Natasha was eyeing the phone like it was at fault, and was, perhaps, an infiltrator itself. Bruce had inhaled sharply, but had yet to exhale again. Clint attempted to see the result for himself and ended up very nearly knocking into the top of Thor’s head, causing Thor to swat him away. And while Tony’s gasp was obviously exaggerated, it had to be said that the arc reactor certainly did add another layer of drama to the shocked-hand-upon-heart movement.

“That’s not supposed to happen,” Clint said at last. “What you see is what you get with Steve. No offense.”

“Trust me, none taken.” Steve shifted sideways as Tony made his way to the couch. He allowed Tony to both claim the spot next to him and sneak his phone out of his hands without comment. “I honestly have no clue why it said that; I’m not hiding anything.”

“Maybe it means that if you  _ were _ hiding something, you would be really good at it,” Thor speculated. He joined Tony on the couch, and Tony wordlessly held out Steve’s phone so that they could both examine it.

With half the team already gathered on the couch, it didn’t take long for Bruce to squeeze in on the end—forcing Steve to actually take his feet off the cushions and put them on the floor—and for Natasha and Clint to slide along the back until they leaned over the top of everyone else.

“Nah,” Natasha decided, propping herself up by her elbows right between Thor and Tony. “He’s shit at lying.”

Tony glanced up at her. “I think the important thing here is how did our star-spangled captain over here get a higher score than  _ me _ .”

“Neither a higher or lower score is necessarily a good or bad thing, you know,” Bruce pointed out. “It’s all about what traits are more valuable for some people and the choices they’ve had to make in their lives. Like whether or not to purchase and wear a vest.”

Tony nodded. “So what I’m hearing is that Thor is the best Avenger.”

“Yeah, well, we already knew that, didn’t we.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
